Are Death Knights really that complicated? Short answer: no. Long answer: nooooooo.
I finally decided to make one, since I got my mitts on the now geriatric Wrath of the Lich King. I always let myself get grumpy over Death Knights, because here I am bouncing between servers, starting from level 1 each time, while they get a pile of pity hand-outs and a pat on the back as they march into Outlands. How many people are out there playing DKs, just because they’re sick of leveling new characters, not because they actually want to play them? More than a couple, I’d think. I’m not at all afraid to say R&D made a stupid call on that one.
They also slapped me around in PvP a lot when they were first conceived, though I’m trying to let that grudge go. Anywho…
Back to the question at hand. Why do people feel the need to point out I’m a “tank spec” for taking Frost? This goes back to the Rogue discussion earlier, though there I was uncertain and shaky. Now, I’ve no intension of backing down from my assessment of the talents. You, random passerby who needs self-validation via correcting my method of playing the game, are wrong. Frost can be a tank spec. After grazing upon the trees for a time, I think all of the trees are capable of tanking or DPS or PvP and so on.
My guess is that Frost gets the tank sticky-note pasted to its forehead because of Frost Presence. Indeed, Frost Presence is the tanking presence. Literally, they took everything they felt was important to a tank (threat, armor, damage reduction and stamina), mixed into a bowl, and baked it at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. The sticking point is that unlike most other classes, there’s nothing to say you have to specialize in Frost to get the most out of your Frost Presence. The only talent of mention is Improved Frost Presence, which like the other Improved Presences, actually slightly improves all of your presences. For example, if you took Improved Blood Presence, you would gain the healing buff of Blood Presence while in your Frost Presence, which would certainly benefit a tank. Frost faithful tanks would get an extra 2% damage reduction instead.
But what about other tanking talents, Skip?
Others? Oh, you mean Blade Barrier, Toughness and Anticipation! Joke’s on you, Prot specs! These are all talents available in Tier 1 of each of the three trees. For a negligible 15 point investment, you can have them all, without spending a single point in anything you didn’t actually want, and qualifying yourself for any Tier 2 talents from any tree that you may fancy. Maybe you want to travel down Unholy for some AoE off-tanking power? You could still go down Blood and get Scent of Blood to fuel your tanking terror. Pay only the cost of admission and stay as long as you like!
There’s a refreshing level of freedom to developing a Death Knight that I’m not used to from other classes. There’s still a division in the trees, though it’s more of a style division than a role division, and they all interplay rather nicely to allow a bit of mix & match not usually found in WoW classes. For that reason, I’m letting go of the hatred I bare for them. They’re still a “face roll” class, yeah, though ease of use doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. I’d kind of like to see a WoW where a small hand full of cookie cutter builds aren’t the only viable ways to optimize for a role. Some argue my Utopian day dreaming with “if all the builds were equally effective, they’re all the same, and what’s the point in having them?” To which I always respond, “if only a few builds are viable for a role, what’s the point in offering a choice of anything else?” But I suppose that’s a debate for another day.
Now, bloody ‘ell, stop starting only select classes at 55. It’s boring down here in the old world. The only people who will play with me are the bored Death Knights camping my corpse.
